Colonnade Pizza isn't trying to compete with Neapolitan imports or wood-fired trends sweeping through every revitalized urban block. It doesn't need to. Since Kalil Dahdouh — a Lebanese-Canadian immigrant who arrived in Ottawa in 1959 — opened the Metcalfe Street location in 1967, Colonnade has been quietly doing something more durable than chasing credibility: it's been building it. Now run by his son Peter, the restaurant has expanded to five Ottawa locations without losing the thread. This is Ottawa-style pizza as a civic institution, shaped in part by the Lebanese immigrant community that helped define the city's food culture, and it tastes like nowhere else.
The reason starts with the cheese. While the rest of the industry defaults to low-moisture mozzarella, Colonnade sources brine-salted brick cheese from the Oak Grove Cheese Factory in Southwestern Ontario. That single choice changes everything — the melt, the pull, the slight saline edge that keeps richness from going slack. The dough and sauce remain a family secret known to exactly three people, which sounds like marketing until you actually taste the result and realize the consistency across decades can't be accidental. The Colonnade Special, their signature pie featuring broccoli, is the order that separates regulars from first-timers — an unlikely combination that works because the cheese and sauce are doing the heavy lifting underneath.
If you're going for the first time, lead with the Colonnade Special and don't talk yourself out of it because of the broccoli. The brick cheese is the whole argument; trust it. Annie Murphy, who grew up in Ottawa, has called it her favourite pizza in the entire world — which is either a celebrity quote or a data point, depending on how seriously you take someone who had years of local access and still chose this place. Come hungry, come with locals if you can find them, and don't mistake the unfussy room for indifference. This kitchen has been right about pizza longer than most critics have been writing about it.
